Re: CEO AF da le dimissioni

Air France-KLM CEO to quit after staff reject pay deal

PARIS (Reuters) - Air France-KLM (AIRF.PA) CEO Jean-Marc Janaillac said on Friday he would resign after staff rejected a pay deal, plunging the airline into turmoil amid a wave of strikes at its French brand that has cost the company 300 million euros ($359 million).

In the job for less than two years, Janaillac had been battling to cut costs at the French national carrier to keep up with competition from Gulf carriers and low-cost airlines. But he ran into the same union resistance as his predecessor, raising questions over the airline’s capacity to reform.

Janaillac said he would resign in the days ahead after more than half of the staff at Air France who cast a ballot voted against the offer of a 7 percent increase over four years.“This is an enormous mess that will only put a smile on the faces of our competitors,” Janaillac told a news conference.

He said he hoped his departure would spark “a more acute collective awareness” before leaving without taking questions.Unions said they would stick with plans to strike on May 7 and May 8.

Air France-KLM earlier on Friday reined in its 2018 profit and growth expectations, partly due to the effects of the strikes, and said it was not able to take advantage of a good market environment for European carriers.

Air France needs to cut costs to keep up with leaner rivals in Europe. Profits at Dutch sister company KLM, which has cut costs, rose in the first quarter, contrasting sharply with losses at Air France.Rivals British Airways (ICAG.L) and Lufthansa (LHAG.DE) have already undergone painful cost-cutting in recent years as they battled to compete with the rise of low-cost carriers in Europe and new competition from Gulf carriers.
Air France has lagged behind, with unions hampering efforts.

“There is inevitably some pain for staff when structural changes are made, but once that is dealt with, you’re left with a much healthier company,” said aviation consultant John Strickland. “That has been proved in the cases of the turnarounds achieved by Iberia and British Airways.”
Shares in Air France-KLM have tumbled 39 percent so far this year. The French state is Air France-KLM’s largest shareholder with a 14 percent stake, ahead of Delta Airlines and China Eastern which both hold 9 percent.

“It is up to the board to define how the airline gets itself out of this current crisis,” the French finance and transport ministries said in a joint statement.

In a high-stakes gamble, Janaillac said before Friday’s vote that it would be hard for him to stay in the role if the unions pushed back against the salary offer. His stance was backed by the French government which has previously said the dispute is damaging the company.

The reform-minded CFDT union, the largest in France, said it regretted the vote’s outcome as well as Janaillac’s decision to quit, but that it would not sign the pay offer in light of the result. A total of ten other unions rejected the offer.

Air France management had offered workers a salary increase of 2 percent in 2018 and a further 5 percent over the following three years. Unions demanded 5 percent this year.“We were asking 5 percent this year, the company was proposing 2 percent. There is probably an answer to be found somewhere in between,” Philippe Evain, president of the SNPL pilots union, told news channel TF1.

Janaillac was appointed CEO of Air France-KLM in June 2016 after his predecessor failed to reform the airline in the face of union resistance.Liberum analyst Gerald Khoo said ahead of the vote result that a rejection of the offer would suggest that Air France was incapable of being reformed.“Losing two consecutive CEOs who have taken significantly different approaches to the unions would imply the business is unmanageable,” Khoo said.

Re: CEO AF dà le dimissioni

Strikes continue as Air France, rail workers and students fight against reforms
Air France staff kicked off another two-day strike on Monday joining rail workers for a second month of stoppages in a bitter feud pitting workers and students against the government over President Emmanuel Macron’s labour reforms.

In the latest sign of the deepening industrial row to grip France, the Prime Minister Édouard Philippemet Monday with unions in an effort to defuse tensions with state-run railway SNCF that has seen rail services disrupted for much of last month.While unions agreed to stick to their programme of striking for two days out of every five through the end of June, there was a split between the hardline and moderate unions with the latter saying they were open to further negotiations.The prime minister confirmed his government was open to absorbing "a substantial part" of the state-owned SNCF railway company and would discuss the issue further with unions.

Groundswell of oppositionMonday’s meeting follows a decision by Air France CEO Jean Marc Janaillac to resign after airline staff on Friday rejected a pay deal designed to end weeks of strikes. Aggrieved staff walked off the job today, embarking on a two-day strike to continue their demands for higher wages.Since rail and airline stoppages began in early April, the country has been beset by employee unrest and disruptions to transport services. Rail workers are disputing the deregulation of the railway network and an end to job-for-life contracts in overlapping industrial action with Air France.The strikes have triggered a groundswell of opposition to a raft of reforms, with workers’ unions, civil servants, transport staff and students uniting in the streets in their thousands but thus far having failed to force Macron’s hand.The French president, who has said he will pursue his reforms “to the end”, appears to have gained some momentum, with public opinion still behind him since his first clash with the hard-left aligned CGT union last October. The latest Ifop survey published Sunday showed 56 percent believe the strikes are “not justified”, a result in line with other surveys since April that favour Macron.CGT chief Philippe Martinez said last week that as with every strike movement, “there are highs and lows”, though he insisted that the movement remained strong.But participation rates at rallies have not reached anywhere near the mass numbers seen in previous eras, with Martinez struggling to drum up support for a grand uprising reminiscent of the 1968 student-led anti-government protests.SNCF management said that the share of staff striking had dropped to 17 percent this week down from more than 30 percent when rail strikes began on April 3.The strength of the protest movement may have waned but between them, union bosses for Air France, the SNCF and university students are maintaining pressure on the government to roll back planned reforms.
Latest developmentsHere are the latest developments on the strike front as France enters its second month of stoppages:

Air France

At Air France, 85 percent of flights were scheduled to go ahead for Monday, May 7 on the 14th day of intermittent strike action, as they press for a 5.1 percent pay increase this year.The stoppages will affect 99 percent of long-haul flights Monday, 80 percent of medium-haul to and from Paris Roissy-Charles de Gaulle airport, and 87 percent of short-haul flights to Orly and the provinces.Overall, it’s the lowest number of flight cancellations since the start of the wage crisis.The government warned Sunday that the state, a minority shareholder of Air France-KLM, would not come "to the rescue" of the company and added that "the survival of Air France is at stake".The statement followed the resignation of the airline’s CEO Jean-Marc Janaillac. Shares for the flagship carrier plunged when French markets opened Monday.

SNCF

Rail workers at SNCF began their eighth round of strikes adhering to a schedule of two out of five days off work starting Monday at 8pm and ending Thursday at 7:55am as Prime Minister Philippe met railway unions for the first time since the beginning of the industrial dispute.According to the moderate union Unsa, discussions will continue until the passage of the railway reform legislation in the Senate. The bill will first go to the Senate committee on May 23 and is expected to reach the National Assembly by July.The representatives of the railway workers will meet Wednesday at 5pm (3pm GMT) at the headquarters of the CGT union to decide on how they will proceed.

Universities

End of term exams are approaching at university faculties across France, but the protest movement against the government’s so-called Vidal law -- designed to introduce a more merit-based admissions process -- continues at various campuses.In Nanterre, where students have led a blockade since mid-April, alternative arrangements have been made for assessing coursework and exams have been postponed.The Tolbiac site, which is part of the Pantheon-Sorbonne University (Paris-1), was forcibly evacuated on April 20 after students led a month-long occupation of the campus. The premises of the Paris faculty were left in disarray and are now undergoing several weeks of renovation work. Up to 18,000 students who were scheduled to take their exams there this month are to be reassigned to centres in the suburbs of Paris.Another school blockaded for the past month is the University of Paris-8. On several campuses, administrations have called for more security, and even police to guard the entrances to examination rooms.(FRANCE 24 with AFP and AP)

Re: CEO AF dà le dimissioni

Strikes and a departing CEO: Turmoil at Air France-KLM

BERLIN (Reuters) - Franco-Dutch airline Air France-KLM (AIRF.PA) is in turmoil after the CEO said he would resign following the rejection of a pay offer by striking French staff.Jean-Marc Janaillac is the second CEO to depart since 2016 over rows with powerful French unions over cost-cutting efforts.Air France’s French unions called on management on Tuesday to resume talks over the pay dispute.The following is a look at some of the key issues involved.

UNION POWER

French unions have staged 15 days of walkouts since February, costing the company more than 300 million euros. A group of 10 unions representing pilots, cabin crew and ground staff at Air France have called for a 5 percent pay increase this year, saying they want to make up for purchasing power lost over six years of pay freezes.Air France-KLM’s management has repeatedly rejected a pay increase of that scale and instead proposed a pay rise of 7 percent over four years, consisting of 2 percent in 2018 and a further 5 percent over the next three years.French unions have a reputation for toughness, hitting the headlines in 2015 when workers ripped the shirts off executives after Air France announced job cuts following pilots’ refusal to work longer hours. Unions also forced Janaillac’s predecessor to row back on a plan to expand low-cost carrier Transavia, although Janaillac did manage to set up “lower-cost” unit Joon, using Air France pilots.
DOUBLE DUTCH

Air France-KLM was officially formed in 2004, with the takeover by Air France of KLM, which was struggling at the time.

Air France is still the larger partner in the tie-up, carrying 51.3 million passengers in 2017, against 32.7 million by KLM.Cultural differences persist too, and Dutch pilots are exasperated by what they see as the French side’s lack of compromise. KLM has undergone restructuring and struck new labour deals to improve productivity and reduce costs. In the first quarter of 2018, KLM almost doubled its operating profit to 60 million euros, while Air France widened losses to 178 million euros.Dutch unions said they see sticking with Air France as the best bet for now, although they urged a quick resolution to the problem.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF WALKOUTS

British Airways was the subject of a bitter pay dispute back in 2010, when it saw 22 days of cabin crew walkouts after a decision to cut cabin crew pay and alter staffing levels. The dispute was eventually brought to an end after 18 months and it cost the airline more than 150 million pounds.BA CEO Willie Walsh also oversaw strikes by pilots and ground staff at loss-making Iberia in his role as CEO of airlines group IAG (ICAG.L) in 2013.

Lufthansa (LHAG.DE) was grounded by more than a dozen pilot strikes from 2014 to 2016 over a dispute on pay and early retirement benefits, with some walkouts lasting many days. It agreed a wide-ranging deal in 2017, and the walkouts cost it hundreds of millions of euros.Like Lufthansa, Janaillac was trying to negotiate with staff at a time of rising profits.Meanwhile, union refusal to accept restructuring at Italian flag carrier Alitalia saw it enter insolvency proceedings last year. The government is propping the airline up with a loan and is still seeking an investor for the carrier. Prospective buyer Lufthansa has repeatedly said it is only interested in buying Alitalia if it can first be restructured by Italy.
NEXT STEPS

The Air France unions, who feel emboldened in their latest demands by the resignation of Janaillac, have now said there will be a pause in the strikes, but have called on management to resume negotiations.Air France-KLM’s board will meet on May 15 and decide on a management transition plan then. They have asked Janaillac to stay in place until the end of the group’s annual shareholder meeting, also on May 15.Franck Terner remains CEO of the Air France unit, while Pieter Elbers is CEO of KLM. Elbers said on Friday that he would “contribute, wherever possible, to the stability and cohesion of the Air France-KLM Group.”

Re: CEO AF dà le dimissioni

Divorce is not an option, KLM chief says ahead of crucial Air France KLM AGM

The future of the now rudderless Air France KLM airline alliance – indeed of Air France itself – will be key to discussions at the combine’s AGM in Paris on Tuesday, even though KLM’s president Pieter Elbers has rejected suggestions the two companies should divorce.

Tuesday will also be the last day for Jean-Marc Janaillac to be at the helm of the troubled transnational alliance. Janaillac stepped down when the powerful French airlines pilots union rejected his latest offer on a pay and conditions agreement 10 days ago. The Dutch flag carrier is holding several aces. The cost of the strikes by Air France pilots so far this year have been upwardly revised to €400m from €300m in the space of one week. And the strikes are ongoing.

KLM‘s strong cards include its profitability: in the 2018 first quarter KLM booked operating profit €32m higher at €60m. Air France posted operating losses of €178m in the same period.
Also, KLM and its Transavia subsidiary carried 4.3 million passengers in April, putting the Dutch arm ahead of Air France which moved 3.9 million passengers in that month. This was the first month since the ‘merger’ that the Dutch arm flew more passengers than Air France. This was due entirely to ‘eight days of strikes at Air France’ in April, the combine said.
There is a strong lobby saying KLM should go it alone. But KLM president Pieter Elbers flatly rejects this. Speaking on the Dutch public affairs television programme Buitenhof on Sunday, Elbers said a divorce of the two carriers was ‘not an option.’

KLM and Air France, he said. need each other. ‘We have accomplished a lot together and not everything is reflected in the balance sheet.’
Nevertheless, Air France must get its house in order, Elbers warned. Negotiations with the unions are stalled. Air France has lost 15 days this year due to strikes. And whatever the unions may believe, the French government will not invest more in the airline nor is it allowed to by the EU. ‘Air France must do it by itself,’ Elbers said.

Influence

Elbers said he wants the spirit of the early years of the alliance to return. When Air France KLM was formed in 2004, Air France chief Jean-Cyril Spinetta served as chairman while KLM president Leo van Wijk was his number two.
But the Dutch influence has steadily shrunk. Air France KLM now has a single Frenchman in charge and a supervisory board consisting of nine French nationals and four representing KLM. Yet KLM accounts for 40% of the turnover and 60% of the combine’s operating profit.
Certainly KLM is pushing for a stronger role in the running of Air France KLM – a shift in the balance of power.

New CEO

The Financial Times suggested on Sunday that Pieter Elbers himself would be the best new head of Air France KLM. ‘Elbers would arguably be the boldest choice,’ the FT said.
Michiel Wallaard, chief negotiator with KLM from the Dutch CNV trade union federation, describes Elbers as striking ‘a balance between modernising and keeping the social dialogue alive.’
However, Wallard warned that there might be pressure to appoint a Frenchman. ‘We are realistic: we are owned by a French company and I don’t think they want a Dutch person to lead the business,’ the FT reported him as saying.

The beleaguered carrier group recently lost CEO Jean-Marc Janaillac due to his inability to end long-running French strikes over pay, and now it’s replaced him with a trio: CFO Frédéric Gagey, who is stepping up as group CEO; and the Air France and KLM CEOs, Franck Terner and Pieter Elbers, who are now also both deputy group CEOs. Meanwhile, former French employment and labor minister Anne-Marie Couderc has become executive chairman of the group’s board.
This setup is being presented as transitional, while the company finds a proper replacement for Janaillac. But it doesn’t seem like the triumvirate will be able to do much to solve the issue that brought Janaillac down: those strikes (which must be viewed in the context of wider pushback against President Emmanuel Macron’s attempted labor reforms).

“Regarding the ongoing labor dispute at Air France, the Air France-KLM Board of Directors confirms that the Air France CEO does not have a new mandate to take decisions that would jeopardize the growth strategy approved by the Air France-KLM Board of Directors,” the company said.

As Bloomberg notes, that leaves the unions with no-one to talk to. So whoever ends up taking Janaillac’s seat will find it just as hot as he left it—if not more so.Air France-KLM, along with investors that include Delta and China Eastern, must be hoping this holding pattern is very brief indeed.

After years of labor strife, the government isn’t prepared to bail out its flagship airline.Founded almost a century ago as a mail carrier to France’s far-flung colonies, Air France has long been an avatar of the country’s glamorous image. It has ferried diplomats and dealmakers to Paris and Hollywood starlets to the festivals in Cannes. In the 1960s it clad cabin crew in Dior. In the ’70s it introduced the Concorde, which linked Paris and New York in less than four hours.

Today the glamour is mostly gone, and Air France—suffering from toxic labor relations, bloated operating costs, and strategic blunders—is more representative of the country’s woes. Jean-Marc Janaillac, chief executive officer of Air France-KLM, the company forged from the 2004 merger of the French and Dutch flagship airlines, on May 4 said he would quit. He has faced a bitter strike that has cost the carrier more than €400 million ($480 million) since February, helping drive shares down by almost half this year. The company on May 15 cobbled together a stopgap management team, with board member Anne-Marie Couderc to serve as interim nonexecutive chairman and Chief Financial Officer Frédéric Gagey as interim CEO, the third person to lead the business in less than two years.

The French government—the company’s biggest shareholder, at 14 percent—says it has no plans to bail the carrier out and that Air France “could disappear” if it doesn’t sharpen its competitive edge. With hundreds of flights canceled in the runup to the crucial summer travel season, “you may see a vicious spiral” as passengers scared by strike threats defect to other carriers, says Chris Tarry, a British aviation consultant.

Air France-KLM lags behind its major European rivals by just about every financial measure, from productivity to profit. Although it’s the region’s largest carrier by passenger-miles, it generates less than one-third the cash flow of Deutsche Lufthansa AG and International Airlines Group (IAG), the owner of British Airways, Spain’s Iberia, and Ireland’s Aer Lingus. The numbers would be even worse if not for KLM. Air France lost €178 million in the first quarter; KLM—with two-thirds the revenue of its partner—saw profit almost double to €60 million.

While its competitors have endured plenty of strikes, recently they’ve forged a cautious peace with unions. Air France, by contrast, seems locked in perpetual conflict as management has failed to convince employees that the carrier must cut costs in response to the growing strength of discounters such as Ryanair Holdings Plc and EasyJet Plc. In 2015 workers protesting planned job cuts stormed the company’s headquarters near Charles de Gaulle Airport, cornering two managers and ripping off their shirts as the men jumped a fence to escape. In the latest showdown, former CEO Janaillac offered a 7 percent wage increase over four years, while unions demanded an immediate 5.1 percent raise. Janaillac put his proposal to a vote of workers. When 55 percent said no, he said he’d step down.

At the company’s annual shareholder meeting on May 15, the new leadership offered no details about its strategy. Management decisions will be “taken collectively” by an executive committee including Gagey and the chiefs of the Dutch and French operating units, the company said in a statement, though there’s no timeline for reopening negotiations with unions. With the new executives appointed only on an interim basis, “this is not a long-term solution,” Sanford C. Bernstein analyst Daniel Röska said in a note to clients. Whoever takes over permanently will face challenges “from competitive threats in key markets, an emboldened union in France, and the lack of a coherent long-term strategy,” he wrote.

Air France-KLM has struggled to match the success of Lufthansa and IAG in developing low-cost subsidiaries to supplement its full-service offerings. It has a small discount arm, Transavia, but scrapped efforts to expand it internationally in 2015 after pilots walked out over expected lower pay for employees outside France. Then last year it launched Joon, a no-frills carrier with millennial-friendly extras such as craft beer and virtual-reality headsets. While that fits the company’s French-chic image, the two units create “operational and brand confusion,” says Andrew Lobbenberg, an analyst at HSBC Bank Plc. Instead, “the group needs an independent, unified low-cost carrier,” similar to Lufthansa’s Eurowings or IAG’s Vueling.

And while Lufthansa has expanded its cargo, catering, and maintenance units—which provide steady cash to offset fluctuations in passenger traffic—Air France-KLM has trimmed cargo capacity and sold some of its catering operations. Such missteps explain why the company lags behind its competitors, says Beltran Ybarra, a representative of Air France’s main pilots union, SNPL. “It’s strategic choices that are in question, not people,” he says.

The company urgently needs to cut costs, integrate the separately run Air France and KLM units, and develop a strategy to defend its Paris hub, where it’s under increasing attack from low-cost rivals. The scary alternative is that Air France could “head in the direction of Alitalia,” the Italian carrier that—even with massive government support—floundered for decades before sliding into bankruptcy last year, says Jos Versteeg, an analyst at Theodoor Gilissen Bankiers in Amsterdam.

Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire has vowed to oppose any push to get the government to shore up the airline. In a May 6 television interview, he called the pilots’ wage demands “excessive” and said Air France will have to sort out its problems on its own. “The state is not here to come to the rescue of enterprises that don’t do what’s necessary to remain competitive,” Le Maire said.

Holding firm against the unions would dovetail with President Emmanuel Macron’s efforts to reinvigorate the economy. He has revamped labor laws to make it easier to fire workers and is pushing to overhaul the state-controlled railways, triggering repeated strikes by employees. “France’s government could make Air France a laboratory for social reforms and labor flexibility,” says Yan Derocles, an analyst at Oddo Securities in Paris. Without dramatic change, the company “risks shrinking and not being able to compete.”

BOTTOM LINE - With losses from strikes approaching $500 million this year and shares down by half, the new management at Air France must restore the carrier’s competitive edge.

Re: CEO AF dà le dimissioni

Air France and KLM Will Stay Together Despite Recent Turmoil: KLM CEO

KLM CEO Pieter Elbers is honest. He knows some of his employees question why KLM, which is thriving, needs its long-term marriage to Air France. But Elbers knows that in airlines, the biggest carrier usually wins. Plus, he knows there’s no other way forward. For better or worse, Air France and KLM are probably together forever.

The doomsday scenario for Air France-KLM — that Air France disappears while KLM emerges as an independent airline based in Amsterdam— is highly unlikely to occur and is “not a relevant discussion,” KLM CEO Pieter Elbers, one of the three executives temporarily running the company, said Sunday in an interview.
The Franco-Dutch airline is in turmoil. KLM continues to thrive, but Air France is struggling to reach friendly terms with labor unions, and ongoing strikes and labor actions over the past several years have crippled it. In May, the CEO of Air France-KLM, Jean-Marc Janaillac, resigned after France pilots, cabin crew and ground staff rejected his offer of moderate raises in a referendum. The French government, which owns a significant portion of the company, has signaled it will not rescue Air France if it needs help.
The board temporarily replaced Janaillac with what Elbers called a “triumvirate” of three executives — Elbers, Air France CEO Franck Terner, and Frederic Gagey, chief financial offer of Air France-KLM. All also handle their existing jobs, and Terner continues to negotiate with Air France’s unions, but a long-term deal does not appear imminent.

Still, in an interview Sunday in Sydney before the IATA Annual General Meeting, Elbers said it remains business as usual, and he suggested the company will be fine, both short-term, and whenever it adds a permanent CEO. While fuel prices have been rising, it remains a favorable time to operate a global airline, as demand in many regions is robust.
“We are keeping the airline up and running,” Elbers said. “We have a stable situation right now. It is very important for all these employees to know what we’re up to and where we are, while the board is dealing with succession and with the governments.”

RIFTS BETWEEN COMPANIES

However, the labor issues — and Janaillac’s surprise resignation — has exposed rifts between the airlines.
Working with Elbers (pictured below), Dutch unions long ago accepted changes that give KLM a competitive cost base and allow it to compete with most major and low-cost carriers. But French unions mostly have rejected management’s overtures for a similar arrangement, and the broader company has suffered.

In the first quarter, a period when Air France suffered through strikes, the French arm lost 178 millions euros, or $208 million U.S., while the Dutch airline made 60 million Euros in operating income, or $70 million.
For the full-year 2017, Air France made money — 588 euros ($686 million) — but not nearly as much as KLM, which reported income of 910 million ($1.06 billion). This happened even though KLM’s total revenues were significantly less than Air France’s.

Given the recent turmoil, some groups, including the French government, have wondered if its all worth it. The government owns 14 percent of the company, and French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said last month that the airline could disappear, though Elbers downplayed those threats, and said a deal with labor should get done.
“There were some statements made by the French government,” Elbers said. “It’s clear in France, there a lot of reforms are going on. We should look also here to the broader context of reforming and some of the reforms going on in France.”
Meanwhile, in the Netherlands, some of KLM’s workers have questioned whether they need the French arm. In a letter last month to employees, Elbers said he had a “understanding for the anger” felt by workers but asked them to remain positive. On Sunday, he said some employees are still skeptical.
“Clearly these strikes are seen not only by customers but also internally as putting the group back rather than forwards,” Elbers said.

AIRLINES NEED EACH OTHER

Elbers said KLM needs its French sibling, albeit with a more competitive cost structure, and called the idea that the two airlines counterproductive.
Almost everywhere in the world, he noted, the largest airlines have an edge, and on its own, KLM likely would struggle against Lufthansa Group and International Airlines Group, owner of British Airways, Iberia, Aer Lingus and Vueling. Those two companies, along with Air France-KLM, control much of the European market. Smaller airlines not aligned with a large group, like Polish airline LOT or Tap Air Portugal, sometimes struggle to compete.
“It is a world of giants,” Elbers said. “If we look to the European consolidation, which is much slower than the consolidation in the U.S. the fact that Air France and KLM are together is really an asset. It’s an asset in terms of our network, it’s an asset in terms of a customer basis, it’s an asset to our partnership. We look to Delta and the deep cooperation we have with Delta in … Amsterdam and Paris. You really have to be of significant size there to do that.”
Long-term, Elbers said the company will be fine.
“If you see where we were at the end of ’17, the results have improved, both at Air France and KLM,” he said. “Transatlantic was thriving. Our network in countries like Brazil was developing, so really things were moving in the right direction. It is bad today with the strikes, there’s no doubt about it, but if you look at the bigger picture, it’s of two strong hubs and two strong brands, a great network, a very loyal customer base. They are still there.”